Texas soon will begin to build a permanent border wall, according to George P. Bush, Texas state Land Commissioner, grandson of former President George H.W. Bush.
“We will begin constructing a permanent wall in the state of Texas shortly. We will be breaking ground in a matter of days. In the coming days, we’ll make an announcement to Starr County, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, where roughly 40 percent of all illegal immigrant apprehensions in our country occur.”
According to a report by Newsweek, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott long pushed for the wall’s construction by founding a private donation campaign that has raised over $54 million.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas General Land Office (GLO) has signed a lease agreement authorizing border wall construction in part of the Rio Grande Valley.
According to a tweet by a reporter, the agreement authorizes “construction of border wall along a GLO-owned farm tract in Starr County.”
Earlier in the year, Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” resulted in criminal charges after the arrests of thousands of migrants who broke state laws amid the crisis at the border.
According to Bush, “[Operation Lone Star] allows us to apprehend, detain, understand the folks in the risk profile the folks that are coming across, and then to be able to jail them. So, it’s a catch-and-jail policy rather than catch-and-release.”
George P. Bush is currently running for attorney general of Texas.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently outlined the steps Texas will take to secure the shared border with Mexico. Abbott says that more than $3 billion of the state taxpayers’ money has been appropriated so that the state can finish the job the Biden administration and the federal government won’t.
Republican Governor Abbott emphasized building the wall saying, “Listen, we have to do it. We have to secure our border while the federal government twiddles its thumbs.”
The governor said state officials monitor the latest caravan heading to the border. According to reports, at least 2,000 migrants from the Caribbean and Central America are traveling north across Mexico to push toward the U.S. border.
Texas moves to secure its border
According to Abbott, Texas will be ready to push back the caravan and other migrants who try to enter the U.S. illegally.
“We’re adding thousands upon thousands of National Guard as well as the Texas Department of Public Safety to secure the border.”
Abbott continued, saying, “As we speak right now, they are barricading the border using different strategies. They’re laying miles of razor wire upon razor wire.”
Texas is identifying the most likely locations where people may try to enter the United States and using massive shipping containers to block the border while doing all that can be done to secure the border, ensured Abbott.
“What Texas is also doing is building its border wall, and we expect to have some of that wall up as early as within the next two months,” he said.
Abbott believes that Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden and their administration are “working against the state of Texas’ efforts to secure our border and keep our own state safe. It’s been unbelievable. First, they’ve abandoned the border … they’re not enforcing the law.”
Gov. Abbott said the Biden administration also has filed a federal lawsuit against him because he used an executive order to prohibit migrants from traveling across Texas and “stop what I was trying to do just better contain the health and safety of our own state.”
The governor said he has learned lessons from experience, including that elections have consequences.
“We see the consequences of Biden being president,” said Abbott. “We need a change in the administration because this is devastating to the United States.”
